Grave mixup to lead to Marine’s reburial

Grave mixup to lead to Marine’s reburial
By Frank Eltman - The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Nov 12, 2007 16:36:20 EST

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. — It’s a Veterans Day gift for a Marine he never met.

A Harlem funeral director said Monday he will pick up the reburial costs for a man who will be exhumed from a national cemetery nearly four years after he was accidentally interred there in a bureaucratic blunder.

“Whoever he is, he can’t do anything for himself any more,” said funeral director Isaiah Owens. “I’d rather this for him than having him go to Potter’s Field.”

The mixup apparently is the first time “somebody was buried who we thought was somebody else” in any of the national cemeteries, which date to the Civil War era, said Michael Nacincik, a spokesman for the National Cemetery Administration.

The error was discovered in late September when the family of Willie Hayes sought to have the Army veteran buried at Calverton National Cemetery on eastern Long Island, only to find that a William Hayes had been buried there in 2003. Cemetery officials initially balked at the new request, but after being presented with overwhelming evidence that Hayes was a legitimate war veteran, the burial proceeded.

Officials then launched an investigation and announced last week that the mixup was apparently the result of a clerical error.


Rest of article at: http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2007/11/ap_gravemixup_071112/